Is Your Workforce More Adaptable Than Anticipated

The majority of industry leaders, HR managers, and entrepreneurs fear the emergence of technological shift and its quest to wipe out millions of job roles. The HR managers are worried about managing their workforce, finding the right talents for the business, and making the existing employees adjust. The change is fast approaching and the HR leaders believe that their employees are not yet ready to change.

Although we can’t stop the evolving economy and its need to grow, we can assess the situation closely to take relevant steps in the future.

In a survey conducted by Harvard Business Review, they evaluated the views of two groups on an economic and cultural shift in the industry. The first group contained low-paid, middle-skilled workers and the second group contained industry leaders and entrepreneurs.

We believe that many of you may have already imagined the response from both sides. But, you would be shocked to acknowledge that both low-paid workers and company leaders think differently.

The company leaders are more worried about adjusting to this change. They fear how recruitment will turn out to be. They think that this change will dissolve many job roles and create new ones. How are the HR managers going to adapt to these changes? How will they find people who would be able to fit in the future job roles?

On the contrary, the workers are rather excited about the change. They don’t have the same anxiety and fear. They want to experience the change and see what future job roles can bring for them.

Can you see the gap?

Can you observe how two sides of the coin have a different story to tell?

Let’s understand Adaptability to change in the workplace

The Reason Behind Disruptive Change

The change is due to disruption factors and the study divided these factors into six groups:

Changing Expectations

Shifting Labor Needs

Increasing need to involve all types of people in the workforce such as migrant workers, immigrants, etc.

Transforming Models

Increasing requirements for remote work.

Increasing requirements for temp staff, consultants, and freelancers.

Work delivery through partner platforms.

The increasing emergence of freelance platforms.

Evolving Environment

Controlling requirements for technology use.

Regulatory changes in wages and overall compensation.

Shifting regulations as far as cross-border flow is concerned.

Why Employees Know Better?

Notably, employees understand the forces that will impact organizations at various levels. However, organizations are not able to fully understand the forces that will impact them in the future. Many believe that these forces won’t impact their work pattern in future or today. The workers, conversely, see opportunities in these circumstances. They are seeing the importance of freelance work and other aspects.

The second more important aspect here is that employees are more optimistic and adjusting to change. Most of the workers are willing to accept the change with open hands, which is lacking in business leaders.

How HR Managers Can Help?

Create a culture of constant learning so that in future you can adapt to changes sooner than later. This indicates that employees should be constantly in an environment of learning. These learning sessions can be as simple as a micro-video or as big as a degree.

Engage employees to adjust to transitioning slowly rather than abruptly entering a new phase. Most of your existing employees can be trained for new job roles. Work on it rather than quickly moving towards the new workforce, which will be a lot harder.

Prepare your workforce for strategy, real-time working. If managers don’t respond to change quickly, you will be left behind in the race. Hence, employees should be able to respond to new, arising challenges as quickly as possible. For instance, everyone working on multiple projects according to their capabilities, learning new skills, or improving communication.

Conclusion

No doubt, the workforce understands the shift in the requirements. This means that these people are willing to change according to new work opportunities. However, HR managers are responsible for preparing the whole organization for this change. Along with leaders, you are required to move the employees smoothly to a new era. Without rushing or leaving behind some employees. There’s a lot of work that needs to done and it starts by accepting the nature of change and the benefits it will bring.